Leonard Kiesel enlisted in the Marines in 1940, just months before the draft was reinstated. Stationed at the Naval Air Base in Jacksonville, Florida, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kiesel was part of a group of Marines who captured three Italian ships trying to flee the harbor--an action which, he claims, should count as the first American offensive action of the war. Soon after, he joined the paratroops and served in the Pacific Theater. Badly injured trying to knock out a machine gun nest during the initial landings in the Battle of Guadalcanal, he was sent back home to the States, where he remained for the rest of the war.